Entomology, chemical ecology, evidence-based environmentalism and science in general. I like big bugs and I cannot lie.

Monday, 1 June 2009

Setsetal

One of the things a naive European visitor to The Gambia (such asmyself) finds most shocking is the rubbish strewn by the roadsides -plastic bags, tin cans and other unidentifiable detritus mingle withanimal filth and the occasional rotting cow or horse carcase,contorted and bloating in the sun. It's enough to make a naive youngentomologist realise that fly control may be more of a challenge herethan she had thought.

The drivers simply fling their used bottles and wrappers from the carwindows. One of the workers here has instituted a rubbish bags incars policy, but it does seem a bit pointless as as far as I can tellthere's no rubbish collection here - the cleaners would just take thebags out to the bush anyway.

The President is apparently also not a fan of litter, but instead ofproviding rubbish collection and recycling facilities he hasdesignated the last Saturday of every month as a Setsetal or clean upday. Everyone in the country is meant to stop whatever they're doing,indeed you can be arrested for driving between the hours of nine andtwelve, and clear up litter. I'm not sure what you're then supposedto do with it, but I saw a lot of smoke and smelled burning plastic onSaturday.

There is actually a form of recycling in operation here; the childrenwill pick up anything they can possibly make toys out of. I've seenbroken glasses frames, machine parts, a tin can lid fastened to astick with a rusty nail - anything sharp or broken or dirty that wouldgive a British mother nightmares the kids'll pick up and probably putin their mouthes. I actually snatched a rusty wire coat hangar awayfrom a small boy because he was trying to stick the end in his ear,then gave it back because he'd probably only have gone and startedplaying with a razor blade instead or something. This recyclingactually worked in our favour once, when the landrover broke down in avillage. My knowledge of cars doesn't go much further than the factthat you push the pedals and magic pixies under the bonnet make it go,but apparently a wire had snapped. OUr driver asked one of thevillage elders for help and explained what he needed, the elderwhipped a wire out of the mouth of a passing child and bingo, themagic pixies started working again.

The problem is I think that Gambians are used to using materials thatdo break down when they're discarded; houses are built from bricks cutfrom the earth in pits outside the villages, and roofed with reedthatch or palm leaves. The spiny, grey-purple stems of the same palmmake a goat-proof fence, neatly tied with bark ropes. Halved gourdsare used to serve food alongside the new enamel dishes on woven grassmats. Gambians are accustomed to using things taht will return to theearth if left outside for long enough, and simply have not yet adaptedto the fact that plastics will not do the same, but then again it'snot like we've got used to this fact either. When something is builtor made in the west no thought is given to how it can eventually bedisposed of, the only difference is that it goes somewhere we can'tsee and don't have to think about. So of course a far more sensiblesolution than leaving rubbish lying around the countryside where itwon't biodegrade is to dig a big hole somewhere out of sight and dropit in there where it won't biodegrade. Because our system isobviously far more sustainable.

"It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. . . There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved."— Charles Darwin